Thanks And Relief Thanks To The Doc (14 June 1976)
For many years after the war the local area Medical Officer was that genial Irishman, Dr. D.H. Waldron. Carl Moser, then Editor of the Gazette, and I first meet (sic) him over a cup of tea at the opening of the first council house in Whiteley Crescent, which was one of Bletchley’s earliest post-war estates.
He had just been appointed MOH after having spent most of his previous professional life as a medical officer with the army in India. There he had become something of a specialist in infectious and tropical diseases and had retired in the rank of colonel.
I was always in some doubt whether to address him as “Doctor” or “Colonel.” Army habit and instinct still stuck close enough both to Mr. Moser and to myself as to incline us to call him “Colonel.” Besides that, there was a kind of understanding among newsmen at that time that where a man had held a regular commission he was entitled to the courtesy of his rank after retirement, though not otherwise. But an MOH is essentially a doctor. So the Gazette called him “Doctor” in connection with his work, but “Colonel” in every other respect. A nice point!
Dr. Waldron expressed himself glad to know us. He had been a long time in the army and was new to civvy street. He was particularly anxious about his public relations. Perhaps we would help see him through in that respect? So began a cordial relationship that continued right up to his retirement.
Much of it was routine stuff. Epidemics of influenza, German measles, chicken pox, etc., sometimes with advice about what one should do or not do. Also outbreaks of food poisoning and the like. More subtle, however, was the need to persuade parents of the advantages of vaccination and immunisation.
First came immunisation against diphtheria, the quick-killing disease that in former days was rightly regarded with something like terror by the population. From personal experience of the disease I had a peculiar interest in the immunisation campaign.
One of my earliest childhood memories is of the day my younger brother was whisked away to isolation hospital with the disease, which was then rampant in our village, killing young and old alike. After he had gone, my parents looked at each other helplessly, then sank to their knees on the hearthrug and bowed their heads in silent prayer. It was all they could do.
It must have been a Sunday because the red, tasselled cloth was on the table. A day or two later my own swabs came through – also positive. We had what was called the steam kettle treatment and we both survived.
I was in hospital ten weeks and my brother fourteen weeks. In a later epidemic the little girl next door died, as did a woman aged 50 just a few doors away. They were taken ill one day and were dead the next.
The immunisation campaign passed off successfully. There was no reason why it should not have done. No bad results were reported anywhere. The incidence of diphtheria dropped dramatically. In very quick time immunisation became practically routine. Every now and then we hear of cases due to neglect to immunise. This should never be. Neglect to have your children immunised still borders on criminal folly, in my view.
Only a few years later poliomyelitis, previously called infantile paralysis, began to assume alarming proportions in this country and not least in North Bucks.
For years polio had been the particular scourge of America. Now it was rearing its ugly head here as well. Insidiously at first, then increasing in strength until one year in the early 1950s there were 20 confirmed cases in North Bucks. One case was fatal. Sixteen others involved paralysis – a high proportion.
Dr. Waldron and the medical profession as a whole were greatly concerned. Doctors made three or four calls a day at homes where there was the slightest possibility that a child had contracted polio. Dr. Waldron’s main hope, expressed in his annual reports, was that one day an effective anti-polio vaccine would be discovered.
Dramatically, that day arrived – in America. Millions of children in the vulnerable age groups began to be vaccinated. Some of the vaccine began to be available for this country.
Dr. Waldron hailed the discovery with delight. This was just what the doctor ordered.
Then, suddenly, just as the vaccine began to trickle into this country and a local scheme of vaccination was being prepared, there was a dreadful scare. Some American children who had been vaccinated against polio contracted the disease. Quickly these cases were all traced to just one faulty batch of the vaccine, but by that time the alarm had been raised in the British national press to the extent that a big question mark lay over the public mind.
It also lay over my private mind. My wife and I had an only child in the vulnerable age group. So had Mr. and Mrs. Moser. I put the question straight to Dr. Waldron. Was there the slightest danger? Was the thing still experimental?
“Now look here,” replied Dr. Waldron. “I have four children of my own. One is young enough to take part in the present scheme and she will be vaccinated. I can hardly do more to express to other parents my own conviction that it is absolutely safe.
That statement, strongly publicised in the Gazette, did a great deal towards quelling local unease. And when, two weeks later, Dr. Waldron announced that the eleven North Bucks GP’s(sic) with children in the age group were talking part, the bogy was laid for good and all.
Consents arrive at a rate of 100 a day until the total reached 2,000. At first North Bucks had enough vaccine for only one-tenth of them. In the week ending May 13, 1956, 58 children aged two to nine had their primary inoculations at the Bletchley Road clinic.
First to be inoculated was eight-year-old Margaret Coates, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. E. Coates, who lived on the Castles Estate. The job was done by assistant MOH, Dr. Seymour. He then turned to me and said: “In a very short time you fellows will be no more interested in this than you are now interested in diphtheria immunisation.”
And so, to my complete satisfaction, it has turned out to be.
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